I like Ducks! They love slugs and turn them into "Fertilizer "!!

Go straight for the iron phosphate stuff unless your soil is extra-high in available iron and you don't want to raise it any higher.

I love, love, love the iron phosphate stuff and have a 2.5 lb. cannister of Slug-Go Plus (iron phosphate + Spinosad)in my garden shed right now plus another cannister of the Ecosense brand of iron phosphate in there too.

Beer might work, but why waste good beer?

Finally, for anyone who is not familiar with the iron phosphate products that Heather and I are discussing, they are organic and kill the snails and slugs, as well as sow bugs and pill bugs. (With the addition of Spinosad, Slug-Go Plus kills sow bugs and pill bugs even better than the original Slug-Go, which is iron phosphate only I've also noticed that since I started using Slug-Go Plus, I almost never have cutworm problems either, so I think the Spinosad is killing them.) Please avoid the chemical/synthetic snail and slug killer products that contain metaldehyde. It is toxic to some forms of wildlife and also is toxic to cats and dogs.

Dawn

Oh yay, I'm happy to hear that you've had success with it! I put out a few saucers of beer tonight just because we've had one bottle of beer sitting in our fridge for like six months. I hope they like Bud Light Lime, lol. Tomorrow after work I'll definitely pick up some of the Slug-Go too.

If I had a farm with some serious acreage and a pond like I had when I was a kid, I would definitely get some ducks! I'm not sure our 1.5 acre slice of suburban paradise would work well for them, though. We also have a pack of coyotes nearby, so I doubt they'd last long!

Not true.They do not have to have a pond,just like having a kiddy pool from time to time and a dog house with a door to protect them at night.

Dawn, I am so envious you can use spinosad, as I have terrible sowbugs and cutworm problems. However, I also have bees, so spinosad is out of the question. It is highly toxic to honeybees. That makes me (spino)sad. :(

I rarely ever see bees around my fruit bed, and since the hollies stopped flowering I haven't really seen them anywhere else on our property. Are they attracted to the Spinosad?

Seedmama, I only use a Spinosad product that is applied to the ground in the form of a granular or pelleted product. I don't spray any sort of liquid Spinosad product on my plants because I have bees everywhere (not beekeeper bees in a hive, just native, local ones). After I put down the Spinosad pellets, I mulch over them so the bees cannot land on them.

I don't know if Spinosad applied in a pelleted or granular product to the ground would harm bees, but I will assume it isn't harming mine because I have a billion bees here every year. There's always so many bees around my garden that friends of mine who are afraid of bees will refuse to go into my garden because of all the bees.

In our garden, before I discovered Slug-Go and, later on, Slug-Go Plus, the sow bugs and pill bugs would literally eat every bean plant I planted as soon as it emerged. I'd lose hundreds of bean plants a year and then when I replanted, I lost those too. That changed after I found Slug-Go. I also lost tons of tomatoes, strawberries and melons to the pill bugs and sow bugs, and they are not a problem on those plants any more either. I don't think I could raise edible crops here without Slug-Go.

Heather, There are different formulations of spinosad. I don't use the liquid spray formulation because it might kill bees (in fact, I think it would kill them) if they visit plants sprayed with it. This is especially true if the bees visit plants shortly after they were sprayed and before the spinosad formulation has dried. If a person uses the Spinosad spray formulation, they can greatly reduce Spinosad-related bee mortality by timing their spraying so that they are spraying when bees are not active.

In my garden and yard, the bees come in heavy numbers when something is blooming that they like. When I don't have anything in bloom that they like, then they go elsewhere. I work really hard to have something in bloom for them all the time, but of course, there are some times there's a lot for them and other times when there's not nearly as much in bloom.

I don't think there is anything in Spinosad that specifically attracts bees, just that it has the potential to harm them if sprayed on plants they like and visit.

When applied only to the ground, I don't see how it could hurt the bees unless they land on the ground and make contact with it.

Almost all broad-spectrum pesticides, whether synthetic or organic in nature, have the potential to harm bees and that is one reason to avoid broad-spectrum pesticides.

Remember that Slug-Go is iron phosphate only and it is perfectly effective on snails and slugs and even pretty effective on sow bugs and pill bugs. It is the Slug-Go Plus which has both iron phosphate and Spinosad that is effective not only on snails and slugs, but also on pill bugs, sow bugs and cutworms. So, a person seeking to control snails and slugs only could use Slug-Go and other products with the same active ingredient (Escar-Go! is another one) with no fear of harming the bees.

I also use an organic fire ant product that contains Spinosad, but I don't think bees visit my ant hills.

Dawn

I kinda figured the pellet form wouldn't bother bees too much unless they were actually drawn to it somehow, and that's what I'll get. For slugs that live under the mulch it seems to make the most sense anyway. I may have to sprinkle it around some of my shrubs, too, if it works on cutworms.

I didn't find any slugs in my beer traps this morning, but an unlucky beetle and spider found one.